I have a question. It's a serious question. Don't laugh.
Has anyone, in the whole history of humanity, ever successfully cooked a jacket potato at home?
Oh, I eat them at work all the time, and they're always fine. Any cafe in the world can provide you with a decent jacket. But something goes wrong when I try and make one myself. Delia says rock salt, olive oil, cover it in foil and whack it in the oven for two hours at 180 degrees.
Somewhere else says microwave them at first, then put them in the oven for an hour.
I have tried everything, and the middle is always hard when I test it. So I stick it back in the oven, leave it for half an hour, and, if possible the middle seems to get even bloody harder. Eventually, hunger gets the better of me and after two hours or so, I usually end up mashing up all the hard bits with butter and dumping a pot of cottage cheese on top and pretending I can't hear the crunch.
So, come on, can anyone actually claim they know the secret to baked potato making? Or is it all a con, and do cafes actually just buy "jacket potatoes" from a factory who make them out of cat fur and polystyrene?
I need to know. I have another potato at home, and don't know what to do with it.
7 comments:
It helps if on prods all over with a fork with a vigorous arm, thus allowing air to escape during the cooking process and a more uniforum jacket potato expereince.
I tried that! There were many fork-based prods. Perhaps I didn't pierce deeply enough.
Hmm. I can't believe something which tastes so simple is so difficult to get right.
If you stab the potato with a knife straight through the heart of it and then whack (Jamie Oliver-speak) it onto the microwave's glass plate it cooks evenly.
You then grill it under a flame made of fire to get the whole crispy skin thing going.
I'm a domestic god.
You may be a domestic god, but I need numbers! How long in the microwave for? What grill setting? How long? Do I need to turn it over or wrap it in foil?
Answer me, damn you!
L x
(Potato lust slightly out of control. Sorry.)
Hi
If I had to do my own desert-island dishes radio show, potatoes would make it into my top two foods (brinjal pickle being the other)
The cooking time is (obv.) proportionate to the size of the spud. One large one takes approximately 11 minutes and 27 seconds on high in my microwave and if you cook two spuds, cooking-time is about 30% longer.
Potato cakes are genius, a combination of pop-tarts and potato.
iH
Well, eleven minutes in the microwave, followed by 20 minutes in the oven seemed to do the trick! Thank you! Still, there was still a small hard bit near the bottom of the potato, but I'm willing to put that down to "cheap, lumpy potato" rather than rubbish cooking.
L x
What you do is put them in an oven on very low heat.
Then leave them to bake for 10 days.
they have now gone shrivelled so you throw them away and go out for a pizza.
Did I teach you nothing?
M x
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